Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode, and today's special guest is Dr Kelly Holderman, and she is a clinician.

She's a lecturer and researcher. She also serves as an academic, dean of students as the Kingdom College of Natural Health. Her passion is detoxification, nutrition, health care. And she also specializes in Lyme disease. And you actually had Lyme disease yourself and beat it. Can you just tell us a little bit about that journey and how you became Lyme free?

Sure. And I would just start by saying that I don't consider myself Lyme free. I think that our body is it hosts a terrain of pathogens. And we really never I don't think we completely clear ourselves of anything. We just learn to live in symbiosis. We learn to strengthen our natural defenses. So I when I got Lyme, I was a train wreck. I was not eating well. I was practicing traditional medicine, just extremely stressed out. And my body was just was not prepared to deal with any infection that I had. And that that really was the key to regaining my health. And I have done so. One hundred and ten percent. I'm unhealthiest I've ever been in my entire life because I strengthen my body's natural ability to detox, to combat inflammation. I really take stress management really seriously. And that's really how I clawed

my way out of that Lyme disease hole. It was just taking into account everything that goes on with our health. It's never one pill or one thing. And I'll show you agree with that. It's it's a it's a compendium of things that we have to get serious about. And we leave no stone unturned. And that's how I practice, is that I look at every aspect of a person, physical, chemical, emotional, microbial, all of those categories. And we really dove in because everyone's different, everyone's unique and what's stressing out their body. But the language of our body when it's when it's under stress is inflammation. So I really I try to start there with everyone in my care.

So you and Dr. Eric Berkovich coauthored a book called The Thyroid Debacle, and I love the name of that title. Oh, my gosh, it's my favorite. And you to focus on more of the root causes of thyroid issues instead of using medication in attempt to treat these issues. So what are some of the top root causes for thyroid issues you talk about in your book?

Serve? So I mean that when I trained in medicine, it was a pill for every ill. So I was really good at handing out the hypothyroidism. Here's your pill. But did it really make sense? I mean, they didn't it wasn't a lack of Synthroid. That was their problem. There were root causes, but I was never taught those. So when I went back to naturopathic medical school, I started to learn about how things such as viruses, heavy metals, gut disposes of bad diet, stress to stress in general can really be the root cause of why our body is shutting down our thyroid hormone activation. And that's where we're looking at is a debacle because there's so many people struggling with hypothyroidism and they're given a prescription and they're never asked to delve into why. So that's what our book goes into. It goes into those categories

again, the physical, chemical, emotional, microbial. It could be seventeen things in those categories that are causing your body so much stress that it's actually deactivating it's actually on purpose, creating that hypothyroidism to try and protect you. And if anybody wants to nerd out little, learn a little bit more about why your body deactivates and why your body goes into this mechanism to protect you, there's a paper called the Cell Danger Response. And if you Google that, it's by Dr. Robert Inovio. It talks about how when our body is under a threat, such as if we get the flu right. So if we get the flu, our bodies like you need to lay down, you need to be fatigued. You need to not do anything because all resources are being jettisoned to help us get over the flu. Well, the cell danger response can happen if

you have Lyme, if you have a virus, if you're completely stressed out in a terrible relationship, your body will go, whoa, I need to slow down. So our thyroid takes a hit or brain function. We get brain fog. We're just tired because our body is screaming. There's something wrong. So you can't supplement yourself out of that. You can't medicate yourself out of that. You have to take a holistic approach. And that's what Dr. and Eric and I are having. You and I, we preach that and we actually do that in our practices. We take people through all the things that can be causing that root cause of hypothyroidism and we try to correct them all over over time. It's not just a magic wand going to wave. And I. Constantly do that, I have hypothyroidism myself, I'm constantly looking through my catagories, what's physically stressing

me out? Do I is there M.F. all over me or do I need to put my phone down or I need to protect myself? Chemical of what kind of potions and lotions am I putting on my my face and my my skin and my hair? What am I eating. What chemicals in my eating. What my painting. My nails microbial. Do I have any latent gut infections. Do I have any viruses that are still hanging around and then emotional. I just keep that emotional health in check. I do. The brain tap is one of the things that I do. It's like meditation on steroids and all this information I'm talking about just to kind of people don't need to be writing this. That's all on my website. It's Dr. Kelly Holderman, dot com. I'm sure we'll link to it. The show notes things that I love

and I do to stay healthy. So that's what I do personally for my health, too. I'm constantly going through those categories and surveying them so that I don't have to take medications. And my body is relieved of trying to pull myself down because there's the stressors are gone.

So currently you're you're personally not taking any thyroid medicine at all.

You don't have to. OK, and then are you checking it? Like, how often would you say you're checking it? Every every three months.

OK, and then if some people need to be on thyroid replacement, some people one hundred percent need to be on Synthroid, they need to be on armer, they need to be taking glandular. And that's something you discuss with your licensed health care provider. Right. But I do keep tabs on it. I really watch it. I can almost tell when I'm starting to kind of have some symptoms. I'm like, OK, what's going on? I try and keep it in check and figure out the root cause again.

Now, what kind of doctor were you before you became a naturopath?

So I was a family practice doctor in Minnesota. Yeah. So I, I was in the trenches with the first line of defense and I thought I thought it was wonderful. I thought we were really helping people. But then I myself got sick and I kind of had this thing in the back of my mind. I go to sleep at night and I think my really helping people by giving them pills. But you're just in this you're in this environment where that's that's what you do. That's what you do. When I got sick and was handed pills and never given that reason why my body was revolting against me, I was like, that's not going to work for me. And that's when I started to learn about discovering root causes.

Awesome, now for you, a lot of people who are naturopaths or holistic doctors more, they are kind of anti Synthroid. It's funny because like people who are like and technologists and just regular doctors, they are like steroids into Synthroid. Right. And then people who are more on the holistic side, they're like anti Synthroid, anti Synthroid. So when you see patients there, you're saying there's maybe sometimes that you actually think Synthroid is better for them than an arm or a thyroid or.

Yeah, I mean, we're we're kind of getting a little technical here. But, you know, if you have anti Tebow antibodies for you, the literature would say that taking glandular or taking things like armor would would not be the best idea. But again, I'm not practicing medicine on this, but I guess I'm not trying to tell people what to do or what not to do. You can die from hypothyroidism, so don't be your own doctor. Find a doctor who will listen to you, will honor what what you're saying and how your body's responding. But I don't think it's as cut and dry as naturopaths don't like Synthroid medical doctors like Stanford. I think that we're really gaining ground on the amalgamation of the two fields. And I hope that Dr. Eric, our our book, The Thyroid Debacle, I really hope that we start to even we're

so polarized and we don't have to be that way. We can all learn from from each other in that aspect.

So in this book, you cover a new model of thyroid care. What is the new model you discuss in your book?

OK, so the old model is the Synthroid. You have hypothyroidism, your age is high or for as low. Here's your prescription. So the new model is why? Why is this happening? And going into that is the deactivations. And I went into this a little bit, the deactivations of thyroid hormone at the cellular level, it sounds really complicated, but all it means is that things are stressing your body out and your body is so smart it wants to protect you. So it actually activates the thyroid hormone in a in your cell. So it's not necessarily the gland problem. It's not like all of a sudden my my thyroid glands not work anymore. It's like, does that make any sense? I mean, I mean, why, why millions and millions of people are are thyroid glands not working anymore? So the gist is, is that we're looking at

the root cause of trying to get your body to stop deactivating your thyroid hormone.

And if you can convince your body that it's safe, that that that there's the stress is less than the physical, chemical, emotional microbial stress is lessened. You can start to see that labs will get better and people start feeling better.

Now, you personally said you yourself have Hashimoto's or and can you talk a little bit about did you did it affect your weight and how is your energy and weight now?

Oh, yeah, it tanked my energy and I was gaining weight. I was really puffy and I went vegan. I was trying to really help myself like calories and calories out. But that wasn't the problem.

The problem was all the stress that was was going on. And again, I had Lyme disease. So that was that was a microbial stress. But I, I myself, you know, there's there's nutrients that we can use. Obviously, our body needs selenium and some iodine to help with the natural physiological processes of of thyroid metabolism.

So I just I keep that in check. And again, I, I was able to overcome a lot of the stresses that were that were really weighing down and causing my thyroid to not work.

So, you know, right now, I, I, I don't do a whole lot, quote unquote, for my thyroid gland. I just do a lot for my body, for my overall health and well-being.

So you have an article on your website about eco hydrogen, enriched water. What exactly is this and what are the benefits of drinking this versus just drinking regular water?

So Eckle hydrogen water, bioenergy science. You know, first of all, the company itself, they are owned by some of the best, finest practitioners, clinicians. I mean, this company knows what they know what they're doing with the science. So that's what really initially drew me to researching hydrogen water is Paul Barry. He is a naturopath and he was really into root causes and the root cause of all disease, if you really, really look at is inflammation. Right. So the hydrogen molecular hydrogen, when it's infused in water and you can go to Molecular Hydrogen Institute, you can go to my website, Hulda, and you can go to Cinergy Science. It all has piles of research about how you ingest molecular hydrogen. It up regulates your nerve to pathway and your nerve to patrias your anti aging pathway.

It activates all kinds of enzymes that help reduce inflammation so you can drink the water and you can reduce the inflammation your body. And again, if we think of inflammation being the root cause of all disease, that's why I really love molecular hydrogen. There's no side effects. The whole family can drink molecular hydrogen. It's selectively up regulating those pathways. So it's not like you're just bombarding your body with a lot of unnecessary up regulation because it's a balance. Everything's a balance, right? So molecular hydrogen is a lot easier to have to have that balance. They do make they make a machine that that the echo machine that makes hydrogen water and they also make tablets where you can put them in a water bottle and drink those big quench free radicals. It's really, really powerful device and tool that I've really implemented in because again,

it's like the whole family can can use it and it's well researched, well studied.

So in my newest edition of my book, Waste Away, I talk about how people don't have to deprive themselves when it comes to food, but everyone needs to decide for themselves what are there red light, yellow light and green light foods where these are like this is completely off limits for me. My body does not respond well to this yellow lights like it feels OK and green lights. I feel super on this. So what are those foods for you? What are your red light yellow light foods?

Definitely. Well, it's it's it's tough to to actually determine what those are sometimes because you can have a delayed food reaction that where you eat something on a Monday and then on a Friday, Saturday, you're feeling the effects from it. So I, I do do some food testing, although the reliability of it is in fact good. I think our bodies are the best indicator.

But again, it can be a little bit tricky. I would say red light foods because I have autoimmune diseases are gluten and dairy. I don't do I don't do well with those. It's not like I eat them. And then I feel bad immediately though. So I, I definitely just to stay away from those because there's enough research to say that there's molecular mimicry and you just you don't want to do that when you have autoimmune disease. But, you know, I've done different different tests and just kind of determined through through that. And again, like through my genetics, I'm really into genetics. I'm certified by the Environmental Genetic Nutrition Institute, going in and looking at genetics, such as I'm weak in processing oxalate so I don't eat a lot of foods with oxalate in them. I have a hard time getting rid of my sulfites, so

I. Stay away from a lot of sulfite foods, and that's where you get into that personalized medicine, that's more than just a food allergy test. But I really think that the best strategy would be Yinon like a really nice antiinflammatory diet, elimination, diet, and then slowly put these things back in and see and see how your body responds.

So talk about some of those foods that have sulfites in it that you don't feel great on.

So smoked foods, red wine, I think some of the cabbage and the sulfur foods like broccoli and cabbage and things like that, it's just moderation. It's just I don't I don't restrict any food groups other than really gluten. One hundred and ten percent dairy. I'll eat it like maybe twice a year and just a little bit.

But but that's really kind of the moral that one.

Well, can you walk us? I saw a ring. Are you wearing an orange?

Oh yeah.

I just got like I just got one today. I mean, I guess I got it last night and I just wore it today for the very first time. I don't even hardly know how to use it yet because I just got it. So tell me about do you love it?

I love my ah. I can't live with every podcast you'll ever see me out at all. I mean, I have I have it on every day. I use it primarily to track my HRB. So that's what I really always encourage people to do, is that if you feel if you don't feel good and you go on, let's say you're going to go on a supplement, like I'm going to try this. My neighbor said it made me feel better. OK, I'm going to go on that. Well, your body will respond by increasing your HRB if that supplement is helping you. So that's an objective piece of data. Other than I don't know if I feel good, I'm not quite sure. So let's say that you start like an exercise program and you start really going for it and you overexercise your heart rate variability will drop

and then your body's like, that's too much exercise. So you can use it for that. I use it to track my deep sleep because deep sleep is when our lymphatics are draining our brain. I mean, if you're not getting good deep sleep, you're in trouble. You got to do a lot of stuff. And there's a lot of resources on my website about how to get more deep sleep. But I'm fanatical about tracking my sleep because if you're not sleeping, if you're not getting adequate, not even just amounts of sleep, but enough REM sleep, enough deep sleep, your health is in jeopardy.

So walk us through. I like to ask all my guests that come on the show, walk us through the day in the life of Kelly. What did you eat yesterday? What time did you eat it and what did your day look like?

So I partake in 18 hours of time, restricted eating. So 18 hours of every day I don't eat anything. It took me a long time to get there. I mean, I was raised Fruity Pebbles and Pop Tarts. So I was not metabolically fit to to jump into fasting. I mean, I couldn't even go like an hour. And I'm like, I'm shaky. I'm hopeful. But so it really takes you can't just go, oh, Dr. Kelly looks really good. She does too fast for 18 hours. I'm going to do that. I mean, it took me a long time. And you work with your health care provider to just try and just just just tighten the window, know? That's what I would say. Just try and work and tightening the window of how many hours you eat a day. So my body is in a state of autophagy

for 18 hours a day. So autophagy acellular cleaning. Right. So you have the two processes of autophagy and mTOR. So enters the building in our body. We're building new things. Babies are made because of mTOR. It's just think of the building and then the opposing mechanism is autophagy. So when you're eating, you're in a building phase and it knocks out your ability to vacuum out your body. Right. And that's not good. If you have residual proteins in your body or you're killing lime or you have extra just extra debris that your body needs to get rid of. That's why I do it. And so my when during my six hour eating window, which I start eating around noon, I'll break my fast with a green juice or some vegetables. And then I usually have I used to have a salad. I have protein on it.

So it just depends on why I'm in the mood for like chicken or beef. I mean, I eat all of all meats typically except for pork. And then I'll usually do dinner with my family. So I'll try to make something that that everybody likes. I have three small kids, so we don't always agree on everything. But then I'll just I'll usually I'll drink a ton of water during the day. I do drink some black coffee during during my fast, but it just depends on how busy I am. I do take I do take a lot of supplements and I'm very methodical about which supplements I choose and I really have narrowed it down. So I'm not taking a ton of them, but I'm taking things to support my genetic weaknesses and taking things to support autophagy. I'm taking things to support my thyroid, just my

metabolism of my body.

So I have an article on that on my website as well.

Can you tell us to share with us just the website? I mean, the the supplements that you personally take each day?

Off the top of my head, I take nicotinamide riverside because I have problems with my sirtuins. I take professional health products, has and a top exist which has Bergreen lithium, resveratrol, things that help the cellular cleaning's. I really think that in this even M.F. will shut down autophagy.

So there's so many things that and it's so critical, a kind of a clue that you're you're a autophagy isn't working really well if you have age spots on your hands and you really shouldn't. So that's why I kind of look at people right away and I'm like, OK, you can kind of see that the you're not cellular cleaning getting caught in your vacuoles. So I take I take plant sterols. I take professional health products as a slonim the thiamin Ioana iodine. It's from kelp. So it's from a natural source. What else do I take? I kind of just mix it up depending on the day. I'll take black seed oil, I'll take phospholipids, I take a ton of COLENE. I formulated a product called Phase two point five byul support because I don't have a gallbladder. And I think a root cause of why

people are sick in general is they are not moving their bile and they're not getting their toxins out. So I formulated that product this two point five, and that has artichoke to support the liver conjugating factors in it. It has changed my life. That has I take an intestinal binder so that when I am dumping toxins into my colon that the that they bind to this intestinal binder. And that's called phase three by professional products. And I take a lot of digestive enzymes for a systemic effect on an empty stomach. Those are by US enzymes. I really like a love systemic enzymes. I think they're really important and they're pretty darn safe. So and then I take digestive enzymes and HDL with everything I eat. Probably a lot more, but I can't rest.

All right, well, let's jump right into the listener questions. This is from Jen in New Jersey. Hypothyroidism runs in my family, and lately I've been experiencing some common symptoms. I've been exhausted, put on a few pounds and even mood swings from time to time. I haven't officially been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, but since it runs in the family, I figured I'm bound to inherit it. I like to have a glass of wine or two every night to unwind from my busy day. And I've read that actually drinking alcohol in moderation can decrease the risk of developing hypothyroidism. Is this actually true and are there certain types of alcohol that does or does not help the.

Well, I've never heard that drinking wine can decrease your risk, and I literally my half my day job is is researching on PubMed, which is the you know, that's where you get your medical science published studies. So I would say that if if if you're if you're not at your ideal weight, if you're not at your ideal energy, that I would cut alcohol out. Alcohol is a mitochondrial poison. It's toxic to your liver. Yes, there are some benefits to the ingredients in red wine, such as resveratrol. But then maybe talk to your licensed practitioner about resveratrol and then other comment about it runs in my family. Yes, you know, you can have some genetic predispositions, of course, hypothyroidism, but I try to look at the whole the epigenetics like what's weighing on the genetics, what's what's causing that her to be stressed out, her to

be not or ideal weight. And then again, you just you go through those categories. So buy a copy of my book, The Thyroid Debacle. We teach you how to go through those categories. We're also going to have a master's class for four lay people on going through those categories. And you can do this. You can you can go through and you can look at all the things and you can start to take the weight off of of of the stress and the inflammation in your body and make huge, huge changes.

All right. This next one is Sarah from Milwaukee. Back in June, I went hiking on a family vacation and end up getting bit by a tick. I found it on me the day after we got back from camping and immediately pulled it off me. For the past couple of weeks, I've had really low energy and felt very achy. I thought it was just probably hormones, but I can't seem to shake it. Could it be related to the tick bite?

Yeah, you should probably go see a doctor. I would think that sounds like it's more than a coincidence. So go go in to go see a licensed provider right away.

All right. Next one is from Marie in Brooklyn. I took the twenty three in me food sensitivity test a while ago and found out that I'm a high risk of getting gluten, of getting celiac disease. I love my pasta. Yes, of course I'm Italian. I eat it almost every meal. But being a very high risk for getting celiac disease means that I should probably watch my gluten intake and eventually cut it out of my diet completely. Right. I just don't know how I could give it up completely unless I absolutely had to.

So I think that that warrants an actual test for celiac disease, but again, a health care provider and so gluten, if you have celiac disease, I think your risk of death is like 30 percent higher than the population than your life span is very much decreased. It's a very, very serious condition linked to other autoimmune diseases. So that's when you just look at you have a hard talk with yourself about how long do you want to live in and what kind of quality of life do you want. So if I had celiac disease, it's a zero tolerance. It's where you're going to restaurants and you're asking, was this even prepared with something that touched gluten? Because it's so it's so dangerous. And I don't mean to be doom and gloom, but it's empowering to know if you have information that can change your life that's

empowering. And then you just you move toward that direction as best you can with the resources you have. And lo and behold, you may feel amazing and go, I don't even know ever why you had the pasta, because they have a comparison to them.

So I think that's there's a lot of psychology that goes into that that is well and is a tough diagnosis. It does run in my family as well.

But well, I guess what she's saying is she took a twenty three and me test, which that is it's basically a DNA test, tells you about your your health, tells you about your predispositions, hasn't diagnosed anything.

Right. So twenty three is just your genetic blueprint. And I read those every day. So she, you need to go in and see just because I'm, I'm twenty three. To me it says that you have a predisposition where your father may be impaired. That does not mean that it's not working.

Go in and see what your levels are in your blood and level and that'll tell you some.

Well where can our listeners go to follow you and find out more about your work.

So everything is that Dr. Kelly Holderman Dotcom. So Darcie, why are man and again, Will, I'm always posting free articles, really good information for people. You can you can email me from that site. You can follow me on Instagram from that site, Facebook from that site, and we'll be giving away a free copy of the thyroid debacle. So for your listeners. So just go in and type in your your email address and then we'll get you into a drawing for that so that we'll we'll get that copy to you. But I think that that is something where I think your listeners are really like it. We touch on diet. I know that it would be right up your alley, too. And then, of course, we're going to be having that that class eventually for for the layperson to really take control of your health. Right.

Because that's kind of what we're faced with right now, is doing that. But we can do it.

And then last thing I know on your website, you've got two different under supplements. You've got tomorrow's nutrition and US enzymes. Is there any of those products on there that you're like, these are my favorite. Like I absolutely out of the different products on there, this is like do not pass. Go go ahead and get it.

Yes. The definitely sun fiber. Oh, sun. So I think our diet which one I got one on and that's that will that will. That's it. If you go to my website has a store, it has a store there in sun.

Fiber is a prebiotic that just completely nourishes your gut microbiome because we're really good at putting probiotics and putting bugs in. But the terrain is all messed up. So it's like if we're planning a garden and for rocks, we throw seeds on it. It's like, well, it's not going to help. So I'm really I'm a big, big, big fan of Prebiotics. So the sun fiber is something that is really excites me, as does the things that I've formulated for professional health products like the bile support and a new product.

Come with me now.

And so that ends up saying, well, thank you so much for being here again, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. And if you have a question that you want answered, go to questions at Chantel Ray dot com. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.